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Jersey Shore, SFA, KD, Dollywood, Carowinds, SFoG, Kennywood, Lakemont

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
Not really a trip report, but just quick check-ins, as I just did with the Euro trip. I wasn’t sure I was even going to do this much, but I’m stuck waiting for two hours right now, so I might as well eat some pizza and start a thread.

Keansburg Amusement Park said on its website that it opens at ten. As I’m trying to get all the Jersey Shore parks in two days, I was pleased this one opens so early. But it turns out that they actually open at twelve, and the only operating coaster, Looping Star, doesn’t open until one. Not a good start.

As for the other parks, I’ve been to them all before except the two Six Flags parks, Lakemont, and these Jersey Shore places.

We’ll see if I can manage to get all these little shoreside parks in two days.
 
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MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
Good luck good sir! Can't wait for some photos.
Thanks! I’ve lived in NYC for almost two decades now, and I’ve never been to the Jersey Shore, not even to Atlantic City (where I’m staying for the next two nights). When I tell this to longtime New Yorkers, they usually react as if I’ve said I’ve never tried water.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
And now they’re telling me they’re having technical issues with the coaster (a Pinfari Zyklon). The dilemma: if one o’clock comes and goes and they’re not ready, do I wait or move on to the next park?

EDIT: Now they’re saying it’ll be ready by one. The Boss blasting over the loudspeaker just to remind me where I am.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
JERSEY SHORE PARKS (overview) — I managed in two days to do all the parks along the Jersey Shore with active coasters (nine of them). This was not terribly difficult to do. The only challenge here was getting through traffic and finding parking, as I was here on a Saturday and Sunday during peak season.

I will add that this is really not an inexpensive endeavor. Frequent parking costs notwithstanding, just paying what the parks charge and trying to do a cred run — at most places just riding the coasters and moving on — I’d say I paid six to ten dollars PER COASTER, and most often it was ten and up, really. It’s a bit crazy if you think of it in those terms.
 
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MestnyiGeroi

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KEANSBURG AMUSEMENT PARK — Small place. Kiddie coaster was closed. That left one coaster, the awkwardly named Looping Star (at least that name is accurate about the one inversion involved). The seats in the cars are about four inches off the floor! That makes for an odd feeling in terms of posture and in terms of one’s very low center of gravity. This made the coaster kind of weirdly intense. The small hill leading into the loop didn’t seem adequate to get the train through that inversion, but of course it made it, albeit slowly enough for some hangtime.

A little warning to anyone going soon: there is a gravel or dirt parking lot at the very end the park that to me (and my experience of going to small parks for many years) very clearly looked like a free lot. Nope. Must have missed the signs, assuming they were there, as I discovered a ticket on my car.
 

MestnyiGeroi

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JENKINSON’S BOARDWALK — A larger park than the previous one, but not much here for the enthusiast: Tidal Wave, an SBF Spinner, and Tornado, a powered Zamperla kiddie coaster.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
CASINO PIER — A still larger boardwalk park with a little more character. The kiddie coaster (Hot Tamales) was the second and last spite of the Shore parks, thankfully.

The notorious Pirate’s Hideaway was the first order of business. I expected it to be very rough given the horror stories I’ve heard over the years, and yet halfway through the ride I was still finding it quite smooth. Then, yes, there were some jerky moments, but really nothing too bad — certainly not enough to place this on worst-coasters-in-the-world lists as I sometimes see.

On the other hand, what people say about the theming is hilariously true: nice theming on the outside, then just an empty metal warehouse-like box on the inside. ?

Hydrus was a very enjoyable coaster, albeit a bit short and similar to other such rides. Rode it twice, front row and back. This was the first real coaster of this trip if you will, and in that sense it was a good start.
 
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MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
STEEL PIER — The Atlantic City Boardwalk on a peak-season Saturday night is tourism insanity. Massive throng of people swarming along a shoreline corridor of commerce.

Steel Pier itself is a typical pier park. Not bad, but nothing special. The two coasters here also won’t wow the enthusiast: Loco Motion, a powered SBF kiddie coaster, and Crazy Mouse, a Reverchon spinning wild mouse.

I’m not a big gambler, but I walked in one casino along the shore. I was surprised to see quite a few fast-food eateries and other amenities in here, making it feel half-casino, half-mall. I guess if the object is to keep people in a self-contained, timeless world of spending money, then you have to give them the amenities to keep going. My one foray into gambling involved putting 20 dollars into a slot machine and walking away with 47. Could be worse.

End of the first day.
 
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MestnyiGeroi

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STORYBOOK LAND — A tad expensive (adults and children all pay 30-ish), especially for me in pursuit of one credit. ?

This is a fairly charming place for children, with most of the attractions themed to fairy tales or Christmas. It’s a far cry from the charm level of Efteling or Idlewild when it comes to this sort of thing, but taken on its own terms, it’s a nice little community park.

Bubbles the Coaster is a clone of Kozmo’s Kurves, but this one is smoother, more nicely themed and landscaped, and it actually has bubbles that the train rides through. Aw.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
GILLIAN’S WONDERLAND PIER — Not really a pier, this is one of two parks (together with the next one) along the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ.

The sole coaster is a wacky worm called — wait for it — Wacky Worm. The op mercilessly asked me, Are you seriously going to ride this? I explained that coaster nerds dorkily count the coasters they’ve ridden, so they’ll go on anything. I expected him to laugh or maybe become a little intrigued, but for some reason he switched to being impressed. He then asked the question I’m always asked when the topic of coaster goondom comes up with non-coaster people: Have you been to Cedar Point?
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
PLAYLAND’S CASTAWAY COVE — There are a powered kiddie coaster here and yet another SBF Spinner. Nothing to say there, but the other two coasters are worth commenting on.

GaleForce was a surprisingly wild coaster! Are there other coasters of this same model out there? I don’t know. It’s vaguely similar to Eurofighters and Infinity Coasters, but I was not prepared for how different it is from these as well. Most notably, it hurls the coaster over the twisting tophats and flings you down the beyond-vertical drop. The forceful nature of the airtime (if you can call it airtime when the restraints really contain you quite tightly) was a shock to me. I could see why some call this kind of intensity rough, but I thought it was pretty great.

The other surprise here was something called Wild Waves. It’s an E&F Miler coaster; it looks as if it were an in-house contraption. The whole coaster is built somewhat high above the park, and it features a lot of rolling hills. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention this coaster, so I was quite surprised by the heaps of airtime here — over the tops of the hills in the front row, and down the drops in the back row.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
MOREY’S PIERS — The most impressive park of the Shore was my last one. This one is spread out over three piers, along another crazy boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ.

Here the all-rides wristband seemed the best option, but at 57 dollars, I felt a tad silly paying it.

Great White I rode in the front row during the day. The view was phenomenal as it goes alongside the pier and out on the sand, facing directly to the ocean. This first ride was nice, but the woodie seemed rather mild, despite its imposing size, slightly hinting at the possibility of airtime here and there, but not really giving any.

I then rode it again at night in the back row. The coaster drops out of the station and swings at speed around a 180-degree turn before it starts up the lifthill, and I raised my arms for this first bit of excitement. But as we hit the lifthill, a voice came over the loudspeaker telling us to keep our arms inside the car. Not a standard recording, but someone telling us live to put our hands down. That was disappointing. Also disappointing was the ride in the back row, as it was extremely rough, and I could feel my lower spine starting to go a bit funny from the shakiness.

I was also very curious to ride the Great Nor’Easter, as many over the years have told me it’s the best SLC. Well, perhaps it does qualify as one of the least bad, along with the one at SFNE, but it does still have that characteristic SLC jerkiness. Oh, and it must have the best view of any SLC on Earth, as it faces the ocean.

They also have Doo Wopper, the mildest wild mouse (mild mouse?) I’ve experienced, Sea Serpent, a typical boomerang, Wild Whizzer, another SBF Spinner, and Rollies Coaster, a very smooth Pinfari Zyklon.

The last thing I’ll mention is one of the last things I did. There is an attraction on the middle pier called Ghost Ship and it only opens up when it gets dark. The entrance does not identify exactly what it is, and I could hear lots of people wondering out loud — is this a ride? A show? What is it? Etc. Because of this, a lot of small children were also in line, and now that I know what the attraction is, I’m very surprised the park didn’t make it clearer and perhaps even have an age limitation. It’s essentially a scare maze, with numerous scare actors inside and all kinds of shocks and effects. The attraction is surprisingly intense and astoundingly long. I was with a group of about ten, and they were terrified. They were following single file right behind me like chicks behind the hen. Then as I got a little distance in front of them at one point, I thought it might be amusing to speed ahead once I was around a corner, as if I had just disappeared. And yes, I could hear them screaming behind me, and one shouted, “And what happened to that guy up front? I don’t want to go first — you go first!” Etc. But the farther ahead I went, the more I thought those children must have been truly horrified, and the amazing length of the attraction meant it must have been an unending nightmare for them. I mean, I just powered forward, really, moving along, but even for me I was just staggered that it kept going on and on and on. Even just spatially I couldn’t believe all this fit on the pier, let alone in the ship-building structure. Was this some sort of Narnia-wardrobe effect? Anyway, the attraction was pretty impressive on the whole — albeit not normally my kind of thing — but again I was just amazed that there wasn’t a clearer warning as to what the attraction is and how intense it is.
 
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Hixee

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Just a minor point of admin - I don't mind double posts when doing a trip report on-the-go when there's several days in between sections coming out, but those ten posts were all made within an hour and a half of each other, several only a few minutes apart. If you're posting like this, please combine them into one post. We have some simple formatting things (bold, underlined, etc) that can help stop it being a big wall of text.

Sounds like a pretty good couple of days, though. I would like to mop up the Jersey Shore creds at some point, just prepare the wallet beforehand! :p Looking forward to the next bits.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
Just a minor point of admin - I don't mind double posts when doing a trip report on-the-go when there's several days in between sections coming out, but those ten posts were all made within an hour and a half of each other, several only a few minutes apart. If you're posting like this, please combine them into one post. We have some simple formatting things (bold, underlined, etc) that can help stop it being a big wall of text.

Sounds like a pretty good couple of days, though. I would like to mop up the Jersey Shore creds at some point, just prepare the wallet beforehand! :p Looking forward to the next bits.
OK, thanks for the heads up. I didn’t realize posts were at a premium.
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
SIX FLAGS AMERICA — First visit ever. The park is dearly in need of a new, top-line coaster. And a lot more shade.

The coaster I was looking forward to the most at this park is the one that was out of commission all day: The Wild One. That’s a painful spite if only because I really would have no incentive otherwise to return to this park.

Yesterday, I rode what many say is the best SLC, and today I was morbidly curious to ride what many say is the worst: SFA’s Mind Eraser. So I was surprised that I felt it was nowhere near the worst. It was shaky, yes, but no more than most SLCs. Certainly, Condor is a lot shakier, and Darien Lake’s Mind Eraser is a LOT more painful.

So I felt let off the hook, only to ride Firebird next, which gave me some of the worst boxes of the ears I’ve ever experienced on a coaster. Wow. Among the worst coasters I’ve ridden.

Roar is a whole lot of nothing — kind of like Carowind’s Hurler but a bit rougher.

Batwing is just awkward, as those Vekoma Flying Dutchmen always are.

Great Chase — painful kiddie coaster. I asked for it.

Clearly, the best coaster in the park is Superman: Ride of Steel. And while I was repeatedly stapled on the DL one, this was not the case here, so I enjoyed the odd layout and airtime, especially for my three rides in the front. My one ride in the back was not as good — first, because the airtime is not as good, and second, because in the last row the final airtime hill slams into the final brakes hard before you’ve even reached the bottom of the hill!

All in all, SFA is a bit of a shabby park, but it was about what I was expecting, so I have no complaints. Well, except for the Wild One. I have complaints about that. Lots of them.
 
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MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
KINGS DOMINION — Four more rides on i305 today, and I still have not greyed out on this coaster, or any coaster for that matter. ?‍♂️

I visited KD once before, two years ago, so the only new ride for me was Twisted Timbers. I quickly figured out that the back of the coaster is more powerful than the front, and I marathoned it. It’s pretty awesome. My favorite part is the initial barrel-roll drop, which, as I say, is especially great in the back. Then the ride is filled with yonking airtime hills.

I was surprised when the thought occurred to me to compare this to Untamed — the RMC I rode most recently — and I couldn’t really decide between the two. In fact, by the end of this evening, I think I have to give it to Twisted Timbers. I didn’t expect to be saying that, and that opinion doesn’t seem a common one when I see rankings.

Anyway, the next few days on this trip are non-coaster-related, so I’ll be checking back in a bit.
 

Hixee

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I was surprised when the thought occurred to me to compare this to Untamed — the RMC I rode most recently — and I couldn’t really decide between the two. In fact, by the end of this evening, I think I have to give it to Twisted Timbers. I didn’t expect to be saying that, and that opinion doesn’t seem a common one when I see rankings.
I've yet to hear anyone make that comparison (maybe the number of people who've ridden both (and are on CF) is relatively slim), but it seems like an apt one. Interesting to hear that's what you thought, too. Twister Timbers looks great!
 

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
TRIP REPORT THRILLING CONCLUSION (WITH A TWIST ENDING!)

There's a reason I have been delayed in finishing this report, and some of you may be interested (unnerved?) by the following.

To begin to finish, I have to go back to that day I last reported on at King's Dominion. It was an oppressively hot and humid day, one in which I kept drinking like mad and still felt dehydrated and spent all the time.

I was riding with a fellow enthusiast and I distinctly remembering telling him, "I know that everyone considers i305 one of the most intense coasters in the world, but I've ridden it before and after riding it again this morning, I have to say I never really felt it was that intense. I mean, I get that it has the G-forces on that turn, but I've never greyed or blacked out on it, and g-forces alone aren't really my sense of intensity. I think of Voyage and X2 and El Toro much sooner when I think of intensity." In retrospect, this hubris must have been what caught the attention of the coaster gods.

In the afternoon, I rode i305 again in the back row. As always, I did not grey out on the infamous first turn, but later in the ride, during those insane one-side-to-the-other snappy transitions, I remember vaguely feeling a bit funny in the head. When I got off the ride, I definitely felt a bit funny in the head. But the heat was ridiculously intense, sort of masking the sensation in its general oppressiveness. The funny head feeling stayed with me for the rest of the day, but I thought it was that heat and humidity making me feel a bit wonky. I even had another front-row ride on i305, several more rides on Twisted Timbers, and a final ride on Grizzly before leaving. I was sure I just needed a bit of rest after an intense day, and as I was going to be meeting with family for the next few days, rest was just what was lined up.

However, I was surprised when I woke up the next morning and still had that funny feeling in my head. It wasn't a headache or dizziness; it was more a "bombed-out" feeling, sort of that dumb, shellshocked head feeling I might have during a hangover. This was a little unsettling, but I had a long drive to pick up immediate family from the Charlotte airport, and then to take them to meet extended family in central North Carolina.

Over the next four days, I socialized with family just fine, but all the while this bombed-out feeling was not subsiding in the least. And in fact, a decided stiffness was slowly increasing up the length of my spine, neck, and back of the head. I wasn't telling most of the family about this, but I was quietly beginning to get a little alarmed. Did I "shake something loose"? I.e., was there some kind of damage to my head? Not the kind of thing you can take lightly when your brain very clearly doesn't feel right and isn't getting better for many days.

Finally, after five days, I was scheduled to leave the extended family and travel with my sister and nephews on a further vacation (Smoky Mountains, Dollywood, and Carowinds). So this was the right time to pop into a local hospital and have a CT Scan done on my head. The news was a huge relief, all things considered. The CT Scan showed no evident damage, and the doctor diagnosed both concussion AND whiplash. Aside from a painkilling injection, the main prescription was to take it easy for some time -- no jarring activities and no loud music, etc.

We spent several days in the Smoky Mountains, and in a few days we went to Dollywood as scheduled. However, I played the role of the Grandpa, sitting and watching as the young'uns went on rides. I've been on them all before, so it wasn't so tragic for me (it was much harder for the boys when they realized Lightning Rod really wasn't going to open the whole day!). I did allow myself the one indulgence of going on Dragonflier. New cred for me, and I knew it would be very smooth. I thought it was tamer than, say, Orkanen, but still an enjoyable ride. I was surprised by how much my nephews -- budding enthusiasts -- really loved it.

Several days later we went to Carowinds. Same story: I've been before, the boys hadn't, I sat and watched them ride. However, as my head was 95% better by now, I allowed myself two indulgences: I rode Copperhead Strike twice (new cred for me; enjoyable ride for the hangtime, but no world-beater), and later Fury once in the front row (I've heard others talk about the ride having a rattle and never noticed it, but this time it was really obvious -- still an awesome ride, though). These rides may have been a mistake, as they did seem to re-aggravate the concussion to some extent. It's tricky because it doesn't make itself felt right away, but just slowly gets worse if it's disturbed in some way.

After I saw off the sister and nephews, I had plans to meet a friend at SFoG, and then to hit Kennywood and Lakemont on the way home to NYC. I canceled these plans and stopped at Shenandoah National Park on the way home instead.

It has now been over two weeks since that day at KD. The neck pain is long gone, but the concussion is still lingering, abating very slowly, as the doctor had said it might.

I'll sign off by asking anyone who managed to read all of this: have you ever experienced anything like this from a coaster? I'm just hoping this is a one-off experience. I mean, I have been riding coasters all summer long, to an insane degree, and put in similar stints last summer -- all with no ill effects to my head. My plan now is to have this be the end of my coaster season, but I certainly am still hoping to get back at the coasters next season!
 
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